Discontinued SSFs for v02.05

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Announcement on Discontinued SSFs for v02.05

CS users please review the important documents below in preparation for the release of CSv02.05. The documents provide information about the Site Specific Factors that will be discontinued for CSv02.05. For questions specific to your registry and your software, you are encouraged to engage your vendors directly. For other general questions, please email csv2@facs.org.

Registrar Announcment Discontinued SSF for CSv02.05

With the implementation of Collaborative Stage Version 2 (CSv2) in 2010, several site-specific factors (SSFs) were introduced into the schemas, but never required by any standard setting agency. These additional data elements resulted in an increased data burden for the users of the CS system. The Collaborative Stage (CS) Governance Committee is pleased to announce an enhancement for CS version 02.05 discontinuing these select site-specific factors, and as a result, reducing the data collection burden for cancer registrars.

The list of SSFs to be discontinued has been approved by all standards setting agencies, including:

Commission on Cancer(CoC)

National Cancer Institute-Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (NCI/SEER)

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Program of Cancer Registries (CDC/NPCR)

Canadian Council of Cancer Registries (CCCR)

What is the Significance?

CS will provide software vendors with a utility to obtain standard setter requirements and encourage them to implement them into their data system. This utility will provide vendors with a list of discontinued SSF’s for each schema so they can be hidden from the end user’s screen and lessen the burden for the registrar.

The Discontinued site-specific factors are not obsolete.

The Discontinued SSFs will remain in the DLL for CS 02.05 and will remain in the NAACCR record layout but can be hidden for data collection purposes depending on each vendor’s implementation of the requirements utility described above.

Discontinuing these SSFs is not intended to affect existing data collected for these SSFs.

The Coding Instructions and any other documentation related to the coding structure for these SSFs will remain unchanged from this point forward. Coding instructions will not be included in the manual for CS 02.05; abstractors and data analysts must refer to prior versions of the manual for information.

CS will no longer provide support for or maintain the discontinued data items, which include responding to questions about these SSFs in CAnswer Forum or other venues or maintaining edits for these SSFs.

Important to Note

Discontinued SSFs are NOT involved in stage calculation

Discontinued SSFS have NEVER been required by a Standard Setter

Codes used in Discontinued SSFS are NOT obsoleted codes

Discontinuing these SSFs is not intended to affect existing data collected for these SSFs.

Preparing for Discontinued SSFsCS

If a facility or registry wishes to continue collecting data for these SSFs, it is the responsibility of the facility or registry to collaborate with its software vendor to maintain these SSFs. The following steps are recommended for every facility or registry in preparation for implementation of CS 02.05.

Review the list of Discontinued SSFs within your facility or registry, e.g., with the Cancer Committee or the users of data from central registries.

Communicate the facility or registry needs to software vendors well before the target implementation date of January 1, 2014, to allow time for any needed software customizations.

Vendor Announcement: Discontinued SSF for CSv02.05

This communication is to provide advance notice to the Collaborative Stage software providers of an upcoming change implemented in CS release v02.05. The hospital registries and central cancer registry community will be receiving the official notice of this change as well. This general announcement from the Governance Committee will consist of three documents, which are attached:

Announcement of Discontinued SSFs for CS 02.05

List of Discontinued SSFs for 02.05

Discontinued SSF FAQs

This document contains additional details of specific interest to CS software providers. See the section Information for CS Vendors below.

Background

With the implementation of Collaborative Stage Version 2 (CSv2) in 2010, numeroussite-specific factors (SSFs) were introduced into the schemas, but never required by any standard setting agency. These additional data elements resulted in an increased data burden for the users of the CS system. The Collaborative Stage (CS) Governance Committee is pleased to announce an enhancement for CS version 02.05 that will discontinue these select site-specific factors, and as a result, reduce the data collection burden for cancer registrars.

The list of SSFs to be discontinued has been approved by all standards setting agencies, including:

Commission on Cancer (CoC)

National Cancer Institute-Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (NCI/SEER)

Center for Disease Control National Program of Cancer Registries (CDC/NPCR)

Canadian Council of Cancer Registries (CCCR)

What is the Significance?

CS will provide software vendors with a utility to obtain standard setter requirements and encourage them to implement theminto their data system. This utility will provide vendors with a list of discontinued SSF’s for each schema so they can be hidden from the end user’s screen and lessen the burden for the registrar.

The Discontinued site-specific factors are not obsolete.

The Discontinued SSFs will remain in the DLL for CS 02.05 and will remain in the NAACCR record but can be hidden for data collection purposes depending on each vendor’s implementation of the requirements utility described above.

Discontinuing these SSFs is not intended to affect existing data collected for these SSFs.

The Coding Instructions and any other documentation related to the coding structure for these SSFs will remain unchanged from this point forward. Coding instructions will not be included in the manual for CS 02.05; abstractors and data analysts must refer to prior versions of the manual for information.

CS will no longer provide support for or maintain the discontinued data items, which includes responding to questions about these SSFs in CAnswer Forum or other venues or maintaining edits for these SSFs

Important to Note

Discontinued SSFs are NOT involved in stage calculation

Codes used in discontinued SSFS are NOT obsoleted codes

Discontinuing these SSFs is not intended to affect existing data on those SSFs

Information for the CS Vendors

The CS Informatics Team is developing a CS Field Requirements Database of the CS data fields which delineates the data collection requirements for each Schema/SSF combination by each standard setter. This database will be separate from the CS DLL. Vendors may query the CS Field Requirements Database to determine which SSF is required by any standard setter, and then may customize their user GUIs to only show the required fields.

The CS Field Requirements Database will be included with the CS02.05 beta release, which is scheduled to be released on August 19, 2013.

The CS Field Requirements Database will be implemented in MS Access.

A set of sample reports will be provided along with an interface for querying the CS Field Requirements Database to produce additional reports on the field requirements.

The CS Field Requirements Database will include the Default Value information which was provided in a spreadsheet for all prior CS releases. The Default Value spreadsheet will no longer be provided beginning with release v02.05.

A NAACCR webinar will be conducted in August to provide details on the CS Field Requirements Database, how to query the database, and the standard reports that will be provided.

Vendors will need to work with their registry managers to determine the extent to which each SSF may be removed from the data screens. While a specific SSF may not be required by any of the standard setters, the registry manager may decide to continue to collect that SSF to satisfy other state/provincial requirements or for other research purposes.

For SSFs that are no longer collected, vendors should:

Retain any prior valid values for that field

If valid values are not available, use the default value for that field which is included in the required status database

At this time, standard edits are set up to allow valid values, including the default value, but not blanks for the discontinued SSFs.

Preparing for Discontinued SSFs

Note to vendors: The paragraph below is being communicated to the registry managers and registrars. It is important to realize that the implementation of the reduction in SSFs will require collaboration between the registries and vendors to fully define which SSFs can be removed and which must be retained.

If a facility or registry wishes to continue collecting data for these SSFs, it is the responsibility of the facility or registry to collaborate with its vendor to maintain these SSFs. The following steps are recommended for every facility or registry in preparation for implementation of CS 02.05.CS

Review the list of Discontinued SSFs within your facility, e.g.Cancer Committee or users of data from central registries.

Communicate facility or registry needs to software vendors well before the target implementation date of January 1, 2014 to allow time for any needed software customizations.